I have a strong feeling I suck at coding. I have a B.S. degree in CS from an average school in the USA.
1) I have a bunch of projects, but they're terribly boring and have ugly looking code. For example, I spent a year working on an ecommerce site. It does what it needs to do, but there were no smart decisions behind the back end. I never had to use design patterns nor data structures. I just pieced it together.
2) I have a lot of trouble with "HackerRank" style problems. I just finished one, an hour ago, called Codility. Even though I passed all the shown test cases, the final results showed that I got the following scores 13%/95%/0%. The 0% was a debugging problem that required a max of 2 line changes. I have absolutely no clue how I got a 0% there.
I've been trying to get a job anywhere, doing some programming, but all the rejections have destroyed me. Aside from the above coding problems, during interviews companies always seem to want experience in X technology. In one of my most recent final interviews, the VP grilled me about not having Python experience (I don't list it on my resume, but the job required it) and stuff I have barely any knowledge on. For instance, I said I did automated testing as part of a software engineer contract (2 months long), but it was not a job requirement so I didn't get any knowledge beyond writing simple unit tests for my personal benefit. The VP started asking me if I used stuff like path testing, error testing, and a bunch of other words I've never heard of in my life.
Is there any hope for me, or should I look elsewhere?
1) I have a bunch of projects, but they're terribly boring and have ugly looking code. For example, I spent a year working on an ecommerce site. It does what it needs to do, but there were no smart decisions behind the back end. I never had to use design patterns nor data structures. I just pieced it together.
2) I have a lot of trouble with "HackerRank" style problems. I just finished one, an hour ago, called Codility. Even though I passed all the shown test cases, the final results showed that I got the following scores 13%/95%/0%. The 0% was a debugging problem that required a max of 2 line changes. I have absolutely no clue how I got a 0% there.
I've been trying to get a job anywhere, doing some programming, but all the rejections have destroyed me. Aside from the above coding problems, during interviews companies always seem to want experience in X technology. In one of my most recent final interviews, the VP grilled me about not having Python experience (I don't list it on my resume, but the job required it) and stuff I have barely any knowledge on. For instance, I said I did automated testing as part of a software engineer contract (2 months long), but it was not a job requirement so I didn't get any knowledge beyond writing simple unit tests for my personal benefit. The VP started asking me if I used stuff like path testing, error testing, and a bunch of other words I've never heard of in my life.
Is there any hope for me, or should I look elsewhere?